How fast can you write?

I just wrote a 3000-word paper in under eight hours. I'm kind of chuffed about it. That's what writers call "banging it out".

It turns out that Word keeps track of not only your document's word count, but also how long it's been open for editing:

I always wondered how fast I could compose when I didn't have to stop and do other things like, you know, check to make sure I'm not wrong. It's impressive, but not useful, to write hooey at six words per minute. In the case of this paper, I'd already gone over all the material in other contexts three or four times recently, so I had it all down pat. I didn't paste in any text, in fact, I even added a couple figures and equations and several links. Not bad! If you'd asked me beforehand, I wouldn't have been 100% certain I could even type this fast, let alone compose.